Harriet Fell's Sabbatical 2002-2003

College of Computer Science --- Northeastern University

July 2002

I am spending this year working on two projects:

visiBabble provides visual feedback for babbling. It is intended to stimulate infants who show delayed babbling and is funded by NIH Grant R41 DC005534-01.
Automatic detection of emotion in speech using the same underlying software as we use for babble detection. This project is funded by NSF grant SGER 0206940.

My colleague Joel MacAuslan of Speech Technology and Applied Research, Lexington, MA and I are building new software for both these projects using Matlab as a base.

I am attending Chris King's Summer Mathematical Institute on Quantum Informatics.

My husband, son and I drove up to Canso Nova Scotia for Stanfest, the Stan Rogers Folk Festival.
The Bluenose
The OysterBand

August 2002

Joel McAuslan and I continue to work on the visiBabble code. We finally have out Human Subject's Clearance and the funding should come through soon. Zina Saadi is experimenting with Matlab graphics for the project. I now have the Macintosh version of Matlab.

Quantum Informatics continues.

I took off one morning and did what used to be my early spring ritual of cycling from Newton, MA to Woonsocket, RI and back.
We went to a They Might Be Giants concert at the Museum of Fine Arts


September 2002

I presented a paper Vocalization Age as a Clinical Tool at ICSLP 2002,

and I got in a day's hiking at Estes Park.

I am visiting at M.I.T. this year and I am attending MIT 6.978: Biologically Motivated Programming Technology for Robust Systems which is about Amorphous Computing run by Hal Abelson, Radhika Nagpal, Gerald Jay Sussman.




October 2002

The visiBabble code progresses. It can now do what our Early Vocalization Analyzer (EVA) program did but has the potential of running real-time. It runs on Macs and PCs instead of Unix machines.

  Vancouver, BC Huanmei Wu and her daughter, Zina Saadi, and I attended the Grace Hopper Celebration, Vancouver, BC



I am working with four Northeastern students this fall:

Justin Richer and Leander Harding are developing Neuron, an abstracted collaborative application platform.
Seth Hoyt is working in amorphous computing using SWARM.
Zina Saadi is studying speech processing. Zina and I were accepted as members of the CRAW Distributed Mentor Program.

November and December 2002

After two and a half painful weeks and two useless rebuilds of my Mac, Matlab is finally working on the Mac again. Thank you Adrian of OroborusX.
I am supervising projects for four Northeastern students.

Amorphous Computing Continues

We spent Thanksgiving in New York City.

Jeeves at the Macy's Parade

Clifford at the Macy's Parade

January and February 2003

I am working on response screens for visiBabble. The input is still from .wav files. Jeff Raab is working on Mac microphone to Matlab code. Joel MacAuslan and I are fine-tuning the landmarks detection code.

I spent two days skiing at Okemo Mountain.

March 2003

       visiBabble is now up and running real-time on a Dell Inspiron 8200. Two typically developing infants will beta test it this month. We will start using our underlying software for detection of emotion in adult speech.

       At M.I.T. I am attending Marvin Minsky's "Emotion Machine" course

and participating more actively in Gerald Jay Sussman and Hal Abelson's 6.002ex, a new version of the traditional first circuits course.

I spent another two days skiing at Okemo Mountain.

April and May 2003

       I delivered visiSyl 1.2 to Nebraska where Cynthia Cress and her students are testing it with a numer of infants.

There wasn't too much to see in Lincoln Nebraska .

We are making progress applying our syllable analysis methods to the SUSAS database.

       M.I.T.'s "Tech Talk" published this article about Sussman and Abelson's circuits course. "Working engineers show frosh the ropes"
The radio in the article is the Breadboard AM radio Hal and I built.

Justin Richer and Leander Harding gave a presentation on "Neuron" to the Northeastern University Student ACM chapter.

July  August  September  October  November and December  January and February  March

Harriet Fell
College of Computer Science, Northeastern University
360 Huntington Avenue #161CN,
Boston, MA 02115
Internet: fell@ccs.neu.edu
Phone: (617) 373-2198 / Fax: (617) 373-5121

Last Updated: June 14 2003 10:00 a.m.
The URL for this document is: http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/fell/sabbatical02/sabbatical02.html

July 2002
	I am spending this year working on two projects: visiBabble provides visual feedback for babbling. It is intended to stimulate infants who show delayed babbling and is funded by NIH Grant R41 DC005534-01. Automatic detection of emotion in speech using the same underlying software as we use for babble detection. This project is funded by NSF grant SGER 0206940. My colleague Joel MacAuslan of Speech Technology and Applied Research, Lexington, MA and I are building new software for both these projects using Matlab as a base.
	I am attending Chris King's Summer Mathematical Institute on Quantum Informatics.
	My husband, son and I drove up to Canso Nova Scotia for Stanfest, the Stan Rogers Folk Festival. The Bluenose	The OysterBand
August 2002
	Joel McAuslan and I continue to work on the visiBabble code. We finally have out Human Subject's Clearance and the funding should come through soon. Zina Saadi is experimenting with Matlab graphics for the project. I now have the Macintosh version of Matlab.
		Quantum Informatics continues.
	I took off one morning and did what used to be my early spring ritual of cycling from Newton, MA to Woonsocket, RI and back. We went to a They Might Be Giants concert at the Museum of Fine Arts
September 2002
	I presented a paper Vocalization Age as a Clinical Tool at ICSLP 2002,	and I got in a day's hiking at Estes Park.
	I am visiting at M.I.T. this year and I am attending MIT 6.978: Biologically Motivated Programming Technology for Robust Systems which is about Amorphous Computing run by Hal Abelson, Radhika Nagpal, Gerald Jay Sussman.
October 2002
	The visiBabble code progresses. It can now do what our Early Vocalization Analyzer (EVA) program did but has the potential of running real-time. It runs on Macs and PCs instead of Unix machines.
	Vancouver, BC	Huanmei Wu and her daughter, Zina Saadi, and I attended the Grace Hopper Celebration, Vancouver, BC
	I am working with four Northeastern students this fall: Justin Richer and Leander Harding are developing Neuron, an abstracted collaborative application platform. Seth Hoyt is working in amorphous computing using SWARM. Zina Saadi is studying speech processing. Zina and I were accepted as members of the CRAW Distributed Mentor Program.
November and December 2002
	After two and a half painful weeks and two useless rebuilds of my Mac, Matlab is finally working on the Mac again. Thank you Adrian of OroborusX. I am supervising projects for four Northeastern students.
	Amorphous Computing Continues
	We spent Thanksgiving in New York City. Jeeves at the Macy's Parade	Clifford at the Macy's Parade
January and February 2003
	I am working on response screens for visiBabble. The input is still from .wav files. Jeff Raab is working on Mac microphone to Matlab code. Joel MacAuslan and I are fine-tuning the landmarks detection code.

		I spent two days skiing at Okemo Mountain.
March 2003
	visiBabble is now up and running real-time on a Dell Inspiron 8200. Two typically developing infants will beta test it this month. We will start using our underlying software for detection of emotion in adult speech.
	At M.I.T. I am attending Marvin Minsky's "Emotion Machine" course
	and participating more actively in Gerald Jay Sussman and Hal Abelson's 6.002ex, a new version of the traditional first circuits course.
		I spent another two days skiing at Okemo Mountain.
April and May 2003
	I delivered visiSyl 1.2 to Nebraska where Cynthia Cress and her students are testing it with a numer of infants.
	There wasn't too much to see in Lincoln Nebraska	.
	We are making progress applying our syllable analysis methods to the SUSAS database.
	M.I.T.'s "Tech Talk" published this article about Sussman and Abelson's circuits course. "Working engineers show frosh the ropes" The radio in the article is the Breadboard AM radio Hal and I built.
	Justin Richer and Leander Harding gave a presentation on "Neuron" to the Northeastern University Student ACM chapter.